Re: the title and name tags for frames

Claus,

Having only a good name attribute will owrk for Jaws, but the HTML
specification provides the title attribute on almost all elements (including
frame and frameset). The title attribute is designed for a human-readable
explanation of what an element does - the name attribute on a frame is a
machine-readable one.

So using only the name does not support good implementation. But using a good
name and a good title does not create a problem, so it is better to do
both.

The longdesc attribute is similar - at the moment most tools do not support
it, so it is necessary to use something like a d-link as well. But it is
important to use the specification, so that we can say to software developers
"there is content out there trying to do the right thing, and you should
support that".

(Actually I believe there is another Danish speech system at least, and
it may be that there are also danish voices available for emacspeak using
Mbrola or festival. Unless you support the specification as well as "what
works in a piece of software", there is no encouragement for developers to do
better at making tools that support the specifications.)

cheers

Charles McCN

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, Claus Thøgersen wrote:

  Hi,
  
  During a rewrite of the Danish guidelines for creating accessable web pages,
  made by the Statens Infomation, the agency that is responsible for the
  Danish national information policies, we have found problems with the WAC
  guideline concerning the use of the title tag used to identify frames.
  
  In Denmark the only screenreader for blind is JAWS for Windos. We have found
  that JFW does not recognize the title  tag when used on frames but it does
  recognize the name tag. So we started out discussion weather we should
  follow JFW or the WAI guidelines. One of the members in the group has
  examined the html 4.01 specification and claims that there is no reference
  to the title tag at all. Is there a reason why the title tag has been
  preferred over the name tag when using frames? And will we degrade other
  access issues if we stick to the html 4.01 and recommend the use of the name
  tag when designing pages with frames?
  
  Regards
  
  Claus Thoegersen
  Center for Blind and Visually Impaired Students
  University of Aarhus
  DK-8000 Aarhus C
  Denmark
  Phone +(45) 8942 23 71.
  Email scsct@mail.hum.au.dk
  
  
  

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000: 
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Received on Monday, 25 September 2000 10:51:38 UTC